This invention relates to an exercise apparatus for exercising the total body.
It has long been known that physical exercise has a beneficial effect on the human body. To this end, those who promote good health have advocated some form of physical exercise to maintain the organs and muscles of the body in a healthy condition.
In most cases, walking, jogging or bicycling provides stimulating exercise for the limbs and vital organs, particularly the heart and lungs. However, as the pace of life for many persons, especially those who tend to have indoor, high stress lifestyles, has increased, the time demands of such lifestyles has not allowed these individuals the luxury of open-air jogging or running. Moreover, in some cases, physicians have discovered that the constant pounding associated with jogging or running has caused damage to knees, ankles, feet and hips. Also, while running and jogging exercises the legs, heart and lungs, the arms assume a passive role in such exercise. That is, the arms move forward and backward as a person walks or runs, but do not perform work or exercise against a positive resistance.
As the public has become aware of the limitations of walking and running as a convenient form of exercise, various types of exercising apparatus have been developed, in many cases being modeled after the training methods used by body building enthusiasts for developing muscle tone for a variety of body muscles. Such apparatus were designed to take into account that most users had limited time and opportunity for out-door exercising, and desired the convenience of exercising in the home or at an indoor location near the work place.
A number of exercise machines have been developed to provide specific exercise for certain body organs and muscles. For example, stationary exercise bicycles exercise the legs, heart and lungs. Stationary treadmills exercise similar muscles and organs; while stationary rowing machines enable the user to exercise the upper torso, especially the arms and shoulders. So-called stair-climbing devices were developed to provide exercise for the legs, heart and lungs. As illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,838,543 and 4,685,666, devices generally called for a support bar for the arms and hands to steady the user, while the legs were exercised by an alternative pumping or stair-climbing motion on reciprocating pedals designed to simulate the climbing of stairs. This action also provided excellent heart and lung exercise.
As the concept of a stair-climbing device began to be refined, the stationary support bar for arms and hands gave way to reciprocating handle bars movingly attached to the foot pedals of the stair-climbing apparatus. Such a device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,830,362 wherein a tracker-action connection between the reciprocating pedals of the stair-climbing device induced a reciprocating movement in a pair of vertically-oriented handles to provide passive tracking exercise for the arms. That is, the positive reciprocating action of the foot pedals by the user resulted in a following or tracking action in the arm handles. The user could optionally hold onto the reciprocating arm handles for passive exercise, or could manipulate the foot pedals without holding onto the handles for leg exercise alone.
A further refinement of the stair-climbing art was developed to provide positive resistance to exercise the arms in a manner similar to the legs, which resulted in U.S. Pat. No. 4,989,858. The teaching of this patent provided for adjustment of the resistance to the arm handles by varying the resistance built into the shock absorbers.
It was therefore an objective of this invention to provide an exercise apparatus which has a wide range of resistance variability.
It was also an objective to provide an apparatus capable of providing exercise options for the whole body, including heart and lung exercise.
It was a further objective to provide an apparatus utilizing free weights.